It is the integrated person who recognizes that meeting with true success requires that one's life be balanced, holistic, meaningful, and guided by the "spirit as the inner source of energy and spirituality as the outward expression of that force" (Dehler and Welsh, 2003, p.115) or "lived religion" (Gould 2005).

The Integrated Person

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Trump Proposes Cutting Billions to Urban Areas He Vowed to Help

This post by Jane C. Timm originally appeared on The NBC News page on March 16, 2017.

President Donald Trump is proposing slashing billions in federal funding that helps heavily minority urban communities — just months after appealing on the campaign trail to residents of cities like Detroit, asking, "What the hell do you have to lose?"

Released Thursday, the budget calls for $6.2 billion of cuts to the nation's Housing and Urban Development agency, putting the already strapped federal housing authority under even bigger strain.

The reductions come in a spending plan designed specifically to keep the president's many promises — "if he said it on the campaign, it's in the budget," Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Wednesday — and one that advocates say will have disastrous effects in the largely African-American communities that Trump promised he'd "fix."

The administration's "America First" budget blueprint is quick to note that there's still $35 billion left for HUD's other programs, and argues that local governments and private groups need to handle their own urban development programs.

"The impact of this budget is there's going to be more people who are homeless, who are living in substandard housing, or struggling to pay rent," Mary Cunningham, co-director of the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities Center, told NBC News. "This budget does not outline a plan to fix the inner cities — it does the opposite. It cuts money that cities rely on."

Trump's budget also eliminates the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which lets communities allocate federal funds toward housing and community projects that bolster and create affordable housing and jobs. It's designed to help the low and moderate-income families, and prevent blight in cities like Detroit, which will see $33 million less funding next if the cut is approved. In the past, those funds have been used to repair or demolish blighted homes and pay for homeless shelters.

Consider an old, boarded up former Masonic Moose lodge in southwest Detroit: The Urban Neighborhood Initiative is redeveloping the 7,000 square foot space into a community center to house youth employment and apprenticeship programs, a legal aid office office, and more. A CDBG grant paid for roughly a quarter of the project, the Lawndale Center, according to the group.

Perhaps more importantly, UNI's Executive Director Christine Bell said that federal investment and support attracted other funds for the project, which is on a walking path to a local elementary school. It will serve the 6,000 Detroit residents under 18 who live near the center.

"This money is essential to ensuring that these neighborhoods don't fall apart," Bell said. "If you take away safe places [for children] to stay while parents have to work two jobs, you're creating more trauma."

Bell said she wants to ask Trump how he intends to boost the communities he campaigned on fixing.

"If this is your strategy, what next?" she asked. "How are you going to ensure that states are able to do this?"

The administration argues the CDBG program "is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results" and calls for the state and local government to take over such funding.

To slash an additional 1.1 billion from the HUD budget, Trump's proposal eliminates the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, the Choice Neighborhoods program, and the Self-help Homeownership Opportunity program, SHOP. The administration calls these "lower priority programs."

HOME is the largest federal block grant creating affordable housing, by funneling grants to states and local nonprofits to help low-income families rent, buy, or repair affordable homes in the community, offering up aid like loans and security deposits.

A signature urban development program from the Obama administration, Choice Neighborhoods, redevelops properties and distressed housing to turn around troubled neighborhoods by developing high-quality mixed-income housing and rehabilitating low-income housing.

SHOP awards grants to non-profits like that buy home sites to be developed into affordable housing, allowing low-income individuals to invest sweat equity in building and repairing low-income homes.

Also on the chopping block?

The Low Income Heating Assistance program that helps heats the homes of the disabled, elderly and families with young children, which the administration argues hasn't demonstrated its efficacy. In the 2011 fiscal year, at peak funding of the program, nearly 9 million homes — 23 million people — received assistance, including 1.8 million veteran homes.

Section 4 Community Development will also see 35 million less in funding, meaning there's less block grants for nonprofits that do affordable housing and economic development like Habitat for Humanity.

"This program is duplicative," the administration's budget proposal writes.

About Me

"Spirituality may ... be defined as the dimension of human experience that enables an individual to create, encounter or discover meaning, purpose, and value in life." - Louis F. Kavar, Ph. D. and Author of The Integrated Self: A Holistic Approach to Spirituality and Mental Health Practice

I am a graduate of College of the Holy Cross with a B.A. in Sociology and an urban planning concentration. During my time at College of the Holy Cross I learned how to effectively express my ideas through writing. It is also where I began to ask a number of really important questions: Who am I? What are my most deeply felt values? How am I willing to be? Do I have a mission or purpose in my life? Why am I in college? and What sort of world do I want to help create? Over the duration of my time spent in college, I learned how to develop personal goals, educational aspirations, and think intently about my religious and spiritual development and formulating a "spiritual quest". Steadily, I gained the confidence, experience, and personal satisfaction that comes through the practice of doing the hard work that is necessary to complete assignments on time and at a high standard in order to step closer to fulfilling my dreams even in those instances wherein the difficulties at times seemed nearly insurmountable. Yes, I learned right there alongside other students how best to persist and prevail.

Today, I see myself more as a "project pursuer", a transformational advocate, a wanderer around invisible peripheries, a witness and facilitator of emergent states (Guldi, 2010), and someone who is eager to work in collaborative relationships with social service organizations, nonprofit entities, and faith-based committees and others who are actively on their way to "framing deep change" and establishing "a new ethic of sustainability, spirituality, and a broader understanding of freedom (Horawitz et al, 2010)". The kind of change that will make the fullest possible use of collective energy or Spirit to drive us all toward a more 'empathic' humanity and by addressing the very important needs of today's urban youth at the local level by; 1.) enabling them to successfully make their transition to adulthood, 2.) facilitating their becoming productively engaged adult citizens, connecting themselves to meaningful work, in positive relationships, and creating a thriving and flourishing place for all, 3.) contributing to their social-emotional-spiritual development, 4.) encouraging the development of their inner knowing and intuition, 5.) cultivating connection with the divine and the sacred through music, visual, and performing arts, and 6.) promoting personal and cultural identity formation and inclusiveness through ongoing exposure to both familiar and universal values and constructive community building practices.

Thank you very much for taking the time to visit my blog. I welcome every possible opportunity to either speak with you by phone or email about the many ways of finding agency, hope, and purpose through face-to-face and heart-to-heart connections with the clear understanding that together we can make a bold impact and be the rising change that is greatly needed in the world today, a "deep change" that completely reflects care, compassion, respect, and universal spirituality or relationship with the "Divine Other (James H. Cone)".

Sincerely,

Jonathan Dunnemann (nickname "JD")

Let's not merely trust our instincts but counterbalance them with the careful consideration of our most important values.